Dad-O-matic - Latest Comments in Using technology to communicate with your teen

Re: Using technology to communicate with your teen

Michel — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:47:03 -0000

I would also support any mean of communications ... kids are eager to use new technologies for communicating with friends, simply because that's is "Kewl" . And if is is also cool to communicate with Moms and Dad, that even better, however we have to adjust to theirs fast evolving technologies :)

maybe we can have a @twitterkids the same way we have @twittermoms and @twitterdads to have a channel between the youngster and the helder !

w/ care
+Michel

Re: Using technology to communicate with your teen

Jules Pieri — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:14:35 -0000

Texting is also great because you can get your son in the middle of class. Not that I recommend bombarding him when he is in the middle of a lecture on differential equations...but this is newfound connection, and dare I say power, to go where no parent could go before? That CB radio would not have cut it, eh Paul? (I am a little annoyed at our giant public high school this week so I am feeling even more anarchistic than usual.)

Re: Using technology to communicate with your teen

grantgriffiths — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:00:57 -0000

CB, OMG are we aging ourselves or what. And Jules you are exactly correct. If you want to communicate and get your teens attention, use what they use. And for goodness sake, don't embarrass them in front of their peers. Thanks for commenting you two and I hope we can keep the conversation going.

Re: Using technology to communicate with your teen

Jules Pieri — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:41:28 -0000

Chris,

We moved to Dublin where our (now teenage) sons were 6, 9, and 12. Rejected idea of kids with cell phones at the outset and were immediately pushed over for the oldest, partly for the reasons you outline. When you text a kid you fit in the flow of his day and preferred comms. Imagine your son hanging out with a bunch of friends and you call him...how annoying. "Is that your dad calling you AGAIN?" Imagine instead texting him...no one knows it is you. It might be that cute girl he's been mooning over. His social cred is not affected and could even go up for the mere fact of your text.

The other reason we went quickly kid-mobile was safety. The very first weekend my oldest boy got an invite to meet a friend after school, we got a call from the friend saying he could not find our son. This was in the middle of Dublin. Can you spell panic? The phone, for urban dwellers in a foreign country, became a necessity. We would have been negligent parents if we did not give him that way of keeping in touch.

Anyway, good post and good thoughts.

Re: Using technology to communicate with your teen

Paul DeLuca — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:37:35 -0000

We just talked about this topic recently with neighbors who have a freshman in college and a junior on high school. Their kids won't answer the phone when you call, but they'll text you back within minutes. We find that to be less true with our 11 and 14 year olds, but I think it's only a matter of time. At least we aren't calling them on a CB radio (like my parents did with me)!